Russian troupe, audience taken for a ride?

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, DEC. 22. Fatigue faded away. The aching muscles turned sinuous, the weary faces emanated brilliant smiles and the athletic bodies turned symphonic. Discomfort, if any, was camouflaged behind the greasepaint.

The colour that drained off their faces after a 16-hour journey in a rickety bus came back once the gaze of the strobe lights caressed them. That was to be expected for they were true blue artistes for whom the applause of the audience was food and fuel.

But, people who turned up at the Ravindra Bharathi to watch the ballet and folk dances by 23 members of the Ural dance company from the erstwhile Soviet Union here on Friday had to undergo an agonising wait of nearly three hours watching the downed curtains. The reason: the organisers of the show, Chennai-based Indian Society for Cultural Cooperation and Friendship, had ferried the artistes in a bus which arrived in Hyderabad only around 8 p.m., one-and-a-half hours after the show's original timing of 6.30 p.m.

The folk dancers had performed on Thursday night at Chennai and immediately left for Hyderabad. Tired and distraught, the dancers alighted the bus in a daze and even had to lug their own baggage.

Meanwhile, a large crowd which turned up at the auditorium had to endure the painful delay with no convincing replies forthcoming from the organisers about the commencement of the programme. The timings announced now and then kept on changing. Stung by the lackadaisical attitude of the organisers, a section of the crowd vent its ire and demanded refund of the admission fee.

"This is sheer harassment of the public. Leave alone an apology, the organisers did not even bother to explain to us the situation," fumed Prof. Omkarnath of the Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad, who had come with his family all the way from BHEL, Ramachandrapuram. A housewife from Banjara Hills pulled up the organisers: "We left home at 5.30 p.m. The kids are hungry and asleep. The entire evening is lost. Even if you refund our money, it is no compensation for what we are being made to undergo." Losing patience, half of the crowd left the auditorium while the organisers returned the money to those who had purchased the tickets at the venue.

One member of the Dance Company said "there were problems with the organisers. We are trying to sort them out since the past two days", but refused to divulge more. The general secretary of the Society, Mr. P. Thangappan, agreeing that there were some differences, said the Russian performers chose to come to Hyderabad in a bus to watch the rural landscape of Andhra Pradesh. But was there anyone to buy this line?. Some (ill)treatment this was.

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